D-Link DIR-615 (Rev. B2)

The B is for bargain

There's plenty going on under the hood of D-Link's DIR-615 wireless router.

D-Link’s DIR-615 carries a $70 list price, but most of the retailers we checked were selling it for around $40 when we wrote this feature. At that price, this router is an absolute steal.

The DIR-615 was slower than our zero-point, Trendnet’s TEW-639GR, in four of our six test locations, but it and the Belkin N Wireless were the only models in this group fast enough to wirelessly stream high-definition video to our media room. And unlike most of the rest of the field, it had no problem delivering usable bandwidth to the client in both of our long-range outdoor test locations. Taking the zero-point out of the equation, Belkin’s N Wireless router was faster at the two locations where the client is closest to the router, but the DIR-615 was faster than everything everywhere else.

In addition to speed, the DIR-615 offered a more complete feature set than any other router we tested. You won’t find some of the latest features, such as the ability to operate a guest network or share a USB printer or storage device, and its integrated switch is limited to 100Mb/s, but the DIR-615 does offer UPnP support, D-Link’s vaunted QoS Engine, and a host of features you typically see only in high-end routers.